2021-03-18 13:49:24
President Biden announced in an interview with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos that he wants to reform the filibuster to allow Democrats to get more legislation passed. The new president stopped short of saying he wanted to eliminate the filibuster entirely, but said he would want to make the obstruction process in the Senate harder by requiring an actual talking filibuster. Right now, forty senators can indefinitely extend debate on a topic simply by asking, which prevents ever voting on that topic. In the past, senators actually had to hold the floor and speak for hours and hours to delay a bill. The idea that Biden is suggesting, and that others have mentioned, is to require the actual speaking to take place once again, so that senators can't just extend debate endlessly without putting in the work.
A change like this would require Republicans to actually organize and to have back-to-back-to-back speakers if they wanted to obstruct a bill. The possible downside to this would be that talking filibusters tend to draw media attention which is the type of thing that blatant obstructionists want. The Republican Party is so propagandized that they might want to do endless talking filibusters at this point. But change needs to happen one way or another because Democrats are not going to be able to get sixty votes in the Senate for the vast majority of their agenda items. If they can effectively gut the filibuster, Democrats will be able to pass much more of what they want. That is, provided that they can keep the party in agreement so they can have Vice President Harris break the tie in the 50-50 US Senate.
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